The carrier contribution to the elastic constants in III–V, ternary and quaternary materials in the presence of light waves: Simplified theory, relative comparison and a suggestion for experimental determination Original Research Article

In this paper, we have studied the electronic contribution to the elastic constants for III–V, ternary and quaternary materials in the presence of light waves on the basis of newly formulated electron statistics. It has been found taking n-InAs, n-InSb, n-Hg1−xCdxTe and n-In1−xGaxAsyP1−y lattice matched to InP, as examples that the elastic constants increase with increasing electron concentration, intensity and wavelength in various manners. The strong dependence of the elastic constants on both the light intensity and wavelength reflects the direct signature of the light waves which is in contrast as compared with the corresponding bulk specimens in the absence of photo-excitation. The well-known results for degenerate wide gap materials in the absence of light waves have been obtained as a special case under certain limiting conditions and this compatibility is the indirect test of our generalized formalism. In this context, we have suggested the experimental method of determining the carrier contribution to the elastic constants for materials having arbitrary carrier energy spectra and our results find six important applications in the regime of photon-assisted transport in modern optoelectronic devices.